Survival stops getting harder forever, and the map bosses get serious

Survival mode had a problem: it got harder in a straight line, forever, which meant every run ended the same way. Not because you made a mistake, but because the difficulty curve simply caught up with you. The first twenty minutes were the game and the last ten were an execution.

Difficulty now levels off after the sixth level. It still climbs — it does not become easy — but the ramp flattens, so a run ends when you run out of skill and attention rather than when the maths decides you are done. Good players are now pushing scores that were flatly impossible before, which is the point of an endless mode.

The five map commanders went the other way. Each one was carrying a regular trooper’s health with a bigger health bar drawn around it, which meant the boss of a map was a slightly longer version of the eighth level you had just played. Every commander now carries double health and hits like it.

They also finally look like what they are. Crimson, Blight, Glacier, Void and Goliath each hold a territory, and each fight happens in that territory. Beating the last level of Chocolate Forest and then fighting its commander on the same board as everything else made the whole map feel like filler.

The boss fights are the best thing in the campaign now, and they are genuinely hard. If you were coasting through the earlier maps, expect to lose a life or two at the end of them.